Developing a Great Setting for Your Story
A great story stands on three legs: character development, plot, and setting. You should tailor the strength of these elements to the length of the story. Longer works need more development then shorter works. Each of these three elements should be equally strong otherwise your story will wobble on uneven legs.
The setting of a story consists of the time, place, circumstances the characters encounter, and small details of their environment. If you under develop your setting your story will appear generic and be very dull to read.
When initially developing the setting start by focusing on these four areas:
- The opening of your story should reveal the when and where the story takes place. ‘When’ would include the date or approximate date of the story. ‘Where’ includes which city the story is set in. The plot should be affected and partially driven by the setting. A story set in during the winter in London should be different than one set in Jerusalem during the summer, even if the plot is similar in both works.
- Characters should be engaged in simultaneous things. This can include things like work, child care, falling in love, grocery shopping, or dance classes. This helps to complete the setting by providing the character with a believable and well round world to interact with. The activities the characters engage in, how well they perform, and how they react should reveal facets about the characters personalities to the readers.
- Change something about your characters setting so that is it fundamentally different from the world your readers live in. You can do this by either having your character live a different life than your reader or by changing something in your reader’s world such as melted polar icecaps, a nuclear holocaust, the collapse of world governments, or ban everyone from reading books.
- Suggest details of the setting rather than trying to explain details. For example, try saying it is winter by saying “he had to carefully navigate the icy snow covered roads.” Suggesting is more powerful than explaining because it allows your reader to paint the setting in their minds eye based on their experiences. This creates a much more vivid setting for the reader than any author can create by trying to describe all of the details.
Would you like to know how well you have developed your setting? Submit your story to Review Fuse and let our writing community critique your work.
Jacob
Stumble it!